Chapter 40: An Omen Before the Storm

The Angel stood just inside the ground-floor maw of a megalith stationed on a Lost World, the massive, swirling clouds in the sky seemingly trying to drown them with rain. Great wings of magic emanated from the Angel's back, stretching from one end of the opening to the other, wide enough to fit the hundred-odd refugees standing shoulder to shoulder behind her had they tried to walk past in one unbroken line. But they didn't try to walk past, because the Angel was protecting those already inside from what was out—an army of thralls several thousand strong, once their own friends and family, rushing at them from across the rain-soaked plains like a wave.

Thousands had coalesced into one hive-minded creature with a singular goal, and the Angel would have stood there and rained fire and brimstone down upon them all with her runes, would have fought tooth and nail to buy enough time for those calling frantically to them over a short-band radio wave.

This is warbird Hermes-3 to megalith Tower of Liberation, the pilot said, their voice blaring over the loudspeakers to all inside the last remaining megalith on-planet, already prepped for emergency takeoff. We are less than a hundred clicks from your location and carrying a full load of refugees—the last survivors. You cannot leave, I repeat, you cannot leave. We are less than eighty clicks from your location now and burning fast to get to you. You cannot leave us. Do not depart. I repeat, do not depart!

Yes, the Angel would have moved heaven and earth, would have run herself so hot with magic output she would burn straight through and never cast again, all to buy those several dozen souls in that last warbird enough time and space to make it in.

Then, among the thralls dashing like mad toward them across the plains, she saw it. A bolt of thunder cracked overhead, splitting the cloud cover and illuminating the Trooper among its cousins. All time seemed to stop as she remembered what had been said of them.

Troopers are a sign of an awakening Abomination, the Seraph, her mentor, had told her once. The only reason we've been so successful in containing the outbreaks so far is because we haven't let an infection grow enough it awakens a natural Abomination, and the contingencies we've put in place for an Abomination accelerating into maturity because of a sorcerer being taken are effective.

But even one Trooper on the field of battle is proof the Abomination is nearly done gestating, if it hasn't fully awoken already. If you see one, you need to get out immediately, no matter the cost. The planet is already lost. Only Corynth and his Shapers knew how to handle an infestation at that stage with any permanence. I myself would be hard pressed to take even one singular Trooper down, and I'd need a partner to even attempt it.

And so, with tears of starlight falling from her glowing eyes, the Angel shut the doors of salvation and ordered the megalith to take off. The vessel shook as its engines roared. The roar mixed with the sounds of the refugees behind her sobbing, and the sounds of those damned wailing over the loudspeaker.

You cannot save them, a voice echoed in her head then, as gravity increased and they finally lifted off the ground. You will die if you go to them.

The Angel recognized the voice then as one from her past—one of the Seraph's old protectors, a Sentinel who had similarly protected her.

There's nothing you can do. Live on and honor their memory.

Narre's last words mixed with the sobs and the wails and the sound of the engine roar, all of it coalescing into a monstrous noise that sounded more like the fires of hell, beckoning like a siren's call.

Glimmer finally shot awake with a yell when the staff building shook, and for a moment she worried dream had become reality—the engine noise was still there, as loud as ever. She laid still and listened to the rattle of the building subside as the engine noise, having hit a peak, finally drew away.

Just a nightmare, she thought, checking in with herself and counting heartbeats. Not real…just a nightmare. You're on Scavria, nowhere else…just Scavria.

But what was with that engine roar? Transports were explicitly forbidden from flying directly into the compound, it was too much of a security risk. Unless…

She gasped and threw herself off the bunk, landing on both feet and pulling off her pajamas as quickly as possible to change. She ignored the other Enclave staffers who had also woken from the noise, rubbing at their eyes and wondering what was going on, and instead rushed out into the cool night air as soon as she was passably dressed.

Chaos and commotion. That was all her sleep-addled brain could latch onto when she saw the scene outside the barracks. A damaged warbird was kicking up a storm of dust as it landed in front of the compound's central hospital building, its front floodlight trained on the nurses and emergency responders garbed in white rushing out the building to meet them. A platoon of regular Horde infantry stood in formation nearby, already prepped to receive them, and Glimmer sprinted toward them. Whatever she was afraid of before, this seemed worse.

While basic transports were not supposed to fly directly into the compound, warbirds—sleek fighter-transports able to descend onto a planet's surface from orbit and always carrying a full cadre of soldiers instead of evacuees—were never to approach so much as the landing pads outside the intake area. Seeing one fly past and all the way inside the compound proper was almost unthinkable. Whoever was piloting that ship was sure to be court martialed and possibly even dishonorably discharged, what with fears of military ships getting taken over by the Beast like in the previous war.

That only made Glimmer worry harder. The last time wartime operating procedure was violated so brazenly, she herself had been the one to do it on Rinne out of pure desperation for how far gone the rescue operation had deteriorated. They hadn't even punished her for it in the end, all lukewarm thoughts of a court martial having disappeared from the High Council's heads the minute 'Angel of Archanas' started appearing next to her name in the media. All on account of her 'heroics.'

The warbird's landing feet touched the ground and the engines revved down. Scavrian evacuees started gathering around the viewports and exposed balconies of their respective megaliths. Some of them had even come out of the wide, floor-level entrances to surround both the hospital and the warbird in curiosity. The soldiers there moved between the warbird and the gathering crowd, yelling strict commands to stay back. None raised weapons at the crowd, but each made it clear there were dire consequences waiting for anyone trying to get to close.

The doors to the warbird's main troop compartment depressurized and slid open. Some of the soldiers peeled away from the group to reach in and pull a stretcher out of the cabin, the struts holding the wheels folding out as they pulled the gurney free. Glimmer saw Lonnie, dressed in full Vanguard armor, hop out and jog alongside the stretcher as it was wheeled to the main hospital entrance. She stooped low as she went, letting whoever was atop it whisper into her ear. When they reached the nurses waiting just outside the doors, Glimmer saw them take the stretcher and stop the two soldiers pushing it from coming inside. When they tried to stop Lonnie, she pushed passed them with a glare, and followed the stretcher inside.

"What's going on?" Glimmer slid to a stop, gasping for breath, and choked the question out to no one in particular, hoping someone there knew what was going on and would fill her in.

"We were ambushed."

Glimmer looked up and saw Kyle, sweaty dripping down his face and oxygen mask dangling off his flight helmet instead of covering his mouth, climbing out of the open hatch of the cockpit to slide down the half-ladder hanging there.

"Ambushed? How do you get ambushed by Beast thralls? They're supposed to be mindless."

"Yeah, well tell that to all of them," Kyle said, jumping off the last few rungs and gesturing to the rear cabin.

More stretchers came out of the warbird one by one, each with a white sheet that covered their occupant from head to toe and concealed their face. Glimmer heart sunk lower with each body that emerged. Soon a train of them leading into the hospital had formed. The refugees around them had thankfully taken the infantry's warnings to heart and hadn't approached any closer, but an audible whisper began to spread through the crowd, building.

"How did this happen?" she asked, near despondent.

"I don't know," Kyle said. He headed toward the hospital alongside the train of stretchers and Glimmer kept pace beside him. "We were supposed to have the city purged by the end of the month, damnit. I was only supposed to provide air support and surveillance. Aratoth and the team went into a building to clear it out and the next thing I know, I'm getting frantic calls for an emergency pickup."

"Aratoth and the…" Glimmer couldn't finish her sentence. She scanned the train of gurneys again and counted them: twelve bodies, which was already two more than a typical urban engagement squad was supposed to be, not counting Lonnie and whoever was in that first stretcher. She glanced behind her at the warbird. No one else emerged after them.

"He and Lonnie were the only ones to make it out," Kyle said. "Although I don't know if you'd call what happened to him 'making it out.' Rogelio thankfully wasn't part of this one, but Lonnie had to take care of the rest of the team herself while I piloted us back."

"What do you mean 'take care of'?" Glimmer asked. They passed into the sterile, halogen-lighted hallways of the hospital interior. Glimmer thought for a moment that the guards on either side of the entrance would have stopped them like they had with the infantry bearing Aratoth's stretcher, but they only glanced in her direction and pointedly didn't interfere with her or Kyle entering.

"You know what I mean," he said. "By the time I got them out of the city they were all already tainted beyond saving. She had to do what she had to before they fully turned." Kyle formed a finger gun with one of his hands and made a shooting gesture with it pointed to his temple.

"Oh god," Glimmer said, feeling like she was about to be sick.

A team of nurses in full protective gear sprinted past them. One of them was yelling into a transceiver about prepping for a massive influx of patients they needed to triage. The whole hospital seemed to be abuzz with frantic energy, and Glimmer was still adjusting to how juxtaposed that was with the relative calm of the barracks she had come from moments earlier.

"Looks like I got us back way before everyone else," Kyle said. "There's at least twenty other teams that got hit like us."

"Aratoth wasn't oversaturated?" Glimmer asked, already dreading the answer. She fought the urge to check her PDA, knowing that if she were to look now, she'd only find a deluge of emergency communications that'd do nothing to help her keep a level head in the moment.

Kyle balked. "I really can't tell these things, especially since I was flying the warbird. Lonnie didn't get to him until last, but she's still really shaken up. I really can't say if she had her wits about her enough at the end there to make an objective call about it." He sighed. "I got us back here before any of the other teams, obviously, but I don't know…"

The train of gurneys took a turn up ahead as the infantry hurrying them along brought them to the hospital's incinerator room. The room was typically shut to keep the smell from spilling out into the rest of the building, but Glimmer had a feeling they wouldn't be able to close the door for a while now. Someone was already loading bodies onto the conveyor.

They pressed on, leaving the incinerator and train of gurneys behind. Glimmer couldn't trust herself to dwell there without throwing up. She realized with a startle that she didn't actually know where Aratoth and Lonnie had gone since they hadn't stopped at the front desk to ask. Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately, depending on how she wanted to look at it) she and Kyle could both hear a voice echoing down the hall—Lonnie was throwing a monster of an outburst inside one of the open rooms up ahead.

"What do you mean he's terminal?" Lonnie said to a harried nurse, just as Kyle and Glimmer dashed into the room. "I just shot twelve of my team in the head because they were terminal. I've been on more assignments than you've seen tainted soldiers first-hand, lady. Don't tell me he's terminal when he was the only one I spared exactly because he wasn't!"

Rogelio stood there next to Lonnie. Glimmer wasn't sure how he had gotten there before them—maybe Kyle had given him an advanced heads up—but he grunted at Lonnie with calming gestures while she was leaned forward, practically bellowing at the poor nurse. Someone had already unloaded Aratoth from the stretcher and onto a bed. Glimmer could see him lying there with his eyes closed, blood and sweat caking his combat uniform and face, thin veins of poisonous black reaching from his collar up to his chin.

"Miss, please," the nurse said, tapping at a tablet in her arm. "You've done your part helping bring them back here, but now it's time to let me do my job. You've been through an ordeal yourself. You need to stop making a scene where the rest of the hospital patients can hear you and go back to the front desk so they can get you processed for a medical evaluation. You need to be checked out as well."

Glimmer heard Kyle whisper a knowing 'oh no' under his breath just as she saw Lonnie's face tinge purple in rage. Rogelio stepped in front of her then, and told her off with a stern face and a fusillade of clipped grunts. He looked over her shoulder, acknowledging Kyle and nodding at Glimmer. Lonnie turned to follow his gaze.

"What the fuck is she doing here?" Lonnie said, bellowing even louder than before. Kyle and Rogelio and the nurse all tried to step in and shush her but she wasn't having it. "Don't tell me to quiet down. Not when the fucking Battlemage who turned down her own assignment comes waltzing in to see the man who's dying because of it!"

Glimmer felt like she had been kicked in the gut, not because of how vehemently Lonnie spoke but because of the words themselves. She kept her eyes trained on Aratoth, realizing that she wouldn't have been able to tell if he was still alive or not if it weren't for the cardiac monitor beeping erratically next to his bedside.

"That's enough," the nurse said, stamping her foot and shooting all four of them a death glare. "I don't care who you are or what you've been through, I will not allow you to make a scene in this hospital. There are people here who can recover, and you are making it impossible for them to do so. You will remove yourselves and go to the front desk for checkups of your own or I will have you removed and brought there forcibly."

Lonnie was fighting a war with herself if the expressions cycling on her face were any indicator. Glimmer, however, knew the nurse wasn't bluffing—the hospital was staffed to near-overflowing with security now that the building was servicing troops in an emergency rather than catering primarily to injured refugees. She absolutely could (and probably would) call them in to take care of things if Lonnie gave any pushback, Vanguard or not.

Kyle and Rogelio seemed to have the same idea. "We're so sorry," Kyle said, grabbing Lonnie by the shoulders with Rogelio and turning her toward the door. "We'll get out of your hair and let you do your job."

They pushed her out the door, and Glimmer spared one last glance in Aratoth's direction. A strange feeling of remorse and guilt tug at her, seeing him lie there on the edge of death like that. There was nothing she could do, though, so she turned and followed the others out the door shortly thereafter.

Lonnie had turned and was speaking in a low, choked-off voice to Rogelio and Kyle out in the hall. She froze when she saw Glimmer rejoin them, eyes wide in anger. Glimmer thought she'd say something or maybe even hit her, but Lonnie just turned and started power walking away toward the front.

Glimmer followed her, and Kyle and Rogelio followed after Glimmer, the three of them giving Lonnie plenty of space ahead of them as they trailed behind. When Lonnie reached the front desk, instead of stopping and asking to be processed for a post-op checkup like she was supposed to, she continued straight on toward the exit.

"Get the hell out of my way," she said, when the infantry there tried to stop her. She shouldered past them and hung a hard right as soon as she stepped outside.

"Oh geeze," Kyle said, watching her go. "We can't just let her wander out there by herself."

Rogelio grunted in agreement, and they tried to head out the front door to follow, but the infantry had recovered from Lonnie practically barreling through them and took a firmer stance with the two of them.

"Let us through," Kyle said, trying to force his way past only to have one of the soldiers put his hand on his chest and hold him at arm's length. "She shouldn't be out there alone, she's not okay right now." A dangerous glint flashed in his eyes, and Rogelio pulled him back by the shoulder faster than even Glimmer could react.

"I'll go after her," Glimmer said, not sparing either of them a second glance as she passed. She went straight up to the infantry, daring them to stop her with a hard look of her own. Neither met her gaze, indicated they'd let her pass without argument.

Of course they wouldn't say anything, Glimmer thought, shaking her head as she pushed past the doors and into the night. No one is going to try and stop the Battlemage from going where she needs to go. What a joke.

Five more warbirds had joined Kyle's, idling outside, and Glimmer saw the silhouettes and engine trails of several more rocketing toward them against the stars in the sky. Most of the refugees that had gathered nearby earlier had dispersed, but that only meant they were instead wandering about the compound in small groups now, too shaken to return to their megaliths. Anxious whispers traded between them: something about Tir off in the distance had changed. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what, since visibility at night was low, but Glimmer could feel it just as much as the others could.

An ethereal wail traveled the distance from the city to the compound and everyone gasped in horror at hearing it. A child started to cry off to the left. Bright streaking comets flashed in the sky, their trajectory betraying them as fresh military reinforcement craft burning through the atmosphere from the main fleet orbiting high above on a direct intercept course for the city. The whispering grew more pronounced. A cat-like revving sounded off to the right and Glimmer caught sight of dozens of speeders shooting toward the city in formation, having just jetted off from the staging area right outside the compound fencing.

Glimmer forced herself to focus on her original goal and stalked off to find Lonnie. Eventually, she found her pacing a new circular footpath into the undergrowth nearby.

"Lonnie, what are you doing out here?" Glimmer said, coming up cautiously behind her. "You've just come out of a botched combat situation—you need to let the doctors check you out."

"Like you know anything about seeing combat," Lonnie said. She spun on her heel, growing vicious, and lunged, pushing Glimmer hard in the chest, faster than she could step out from.

Glimmer took the full brunt of it and took several steps back, trying keep her balance. Lonnie feigned a look of surprise. "Oh, silly me, what am I even saying? You have seen combat. Plenty of it!"

She lunged again for another push. Now that she was expecting it, Glimmer could have dodged, or even used Lonnie's momentum against her to lock her in an armbar on the ground—she was emotional enough it might have worked. But instead, she took the shove head on again.

"What is this about, Lonnie?" she asked, staggering backward again. "Is this about me not picking you and the others up and lead?"

"Of course it is!" Lonnie shoved Glimmer a third time with a roar. "Of course it's about that. Why the hell aren't you fighting back, damnit?"

She lunged a fourth time, but Glimmer turned her body so the majority of the force behind the push angled off her. She whirled all the way around Lonnie before she could react and pushed her from behind instead.

She's really going off the deep end emotionally if she's this clumsy, was all Glimmer could think when she saw Lonnie stumble forward and almost fall. A bitter pit of worry began to form inside her at seeing that.

"This has nothing to do with me taking command," Glimmer said, keeping a measured voice. "Kyle said you were ambushed in the city. He said there were plenty of others that were ambushed as well—at least 20 teams! It would have happened no matter who was in charge and no matter who went in to respond. You can't beat yourself up or get mad at me for it, this is just what happens sometimes."

Lonnie whirled back around to face her and Glimmer got a clear look at the anguish radiating off her; tears were threatening to fall freely from her wide, bloodshot eyes, and her whole body was tensed for a fight. "I'm not beating myself up about any of this," she said, voice quavering. "But I do think I want to beat the shit out of you right now."

She put up two fists high and tight to her face and assumed a boxer's stance, bouncing on her toes. Before Glimmer could respond, she closed the distance between them and threw a punch. It sailed just past Glimmer's head, slipping the blow thanks only to the muscle memory Taline had instilled in her from hours upon hours of close quarters combat drills. Glimmer never understood why a Battlemage who could move mountains with spells had to train in martial combat as extensively as Taline had forced her to, but now she was thankful for it.

"Are you crazy," Glimmer said, dodging another blow. "You're going to get court-martialed for this. Stop!" A number of people, including Horde Infantry, had noticed them and were starting to gather.

"Not if you join in," Lonnie said as she feinted a punch. "Come on and fight back already. And don't use any of that magic bullshit on me, it's cheating."

Something in the way Lonnie spoke tipped her off. Whether it was how each of her words came out clipped like she was afraid she'd burst into tears if she let them lengthen too much, or the way she seemed to almost be begging for a fight instead of demanding it, Glimmer wasn't sure, but she got the sense that Lonnie needed this. Needed an outlet. So, half-wary and half-intrigued, she curled both her hands into fists too and squared up.

"Why did you turn us down?" Lonnie asked, inching forward. "Why didn't you take us on like you were supposed to?"

"I've been pretty upfront with everyone I've reported to that I'm not to lead a team," Glimmer said, dodging a blow and throwing one of her own. "The High Council wanted to try and pull a fast one and assign you to me without any warning. I spoke to Aratoth and he agreed in the end that it'd be a bad idea to force it. That's why he took you off my roster."

Lonnie scoffed and sidestepped a round of successive blows Glimmer fired off at her. "Yeah, right."

"It's true. I tried to come tell you almost immediately after we landed, but you wouldn't listen." Glimmer stepped around a jab, then grabbed Lonnie by the front of her armor and threw her from the hip. "I don't understand why you're so fixated on me leading," she said. "We probably all would have died if I was there in charge, instead of you and Kyle at least getting out."

"None of that shit would have happened in the first place if you were there!" Lonnie said, rolling as soon as she struck the ground and bouncing back up to her feet. "I don't know why you have this idea you're going to lock up the moment you wade into a battle. Is this because of what happened up on Prime's citadel?"

"That's part of it," Glimmer said, darting backward to avoid another blow.

"That was years ago," Lonnie said. "And if you ever doubted whether or not it still affected your ability to lead, what happened on Rinne should have more than proved that's not the case."

Glimmer reeled. Why did everyone bring that up? And why did she think Lonnie would have a different impression of what happened there compared to everyone else? "Rinne is different," she said, forcing herself to say the words.

"Like hell it was different," Lonnie said, setting upon her with a ferocious barrage of punches and kicks and sweeps at her legs, each of which Glimmer shied away from in turn. "Fighting is fighting. It doesn't matter how you feel about it or what the circumstances are, it matters that you've done it and survived. And you've done way more than that, Glimmer."

She threw one more blow that Glimmer dodged before stepping in and pushing her backward, hard.

"Rinne is the other part of it!"

To her credit, Lonnie looked stunned, although Glimmer didn't push the advantage when her guard dropped. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that Rinne is the other half of the reason why I know I can't lead. I thought the same thing you did! I thought, 'well gee, the emperor's Citadel was years ago, maybe it's fine', but it wasn't fine, Lonnie. Rinne…that whole situation was so fucked up. It's not something to pull out and point to as an example of good leadership."

"It isn't?" Lonnie said, stumbling. "Seemed like great leadership to me, but you don't have to take my word for it. The people all think so as well."

"No, they don't."

"They gave you your name after that, didn't they?" They call you an angel because you saved thousands of people when no one else could—"

Glimmer clapped her hands to her ears and shook her head. "Stop! You don't understand!"

"Then make me understand, Glimmer! All I know is the number of people you—you alone—saved. And it may not have happened on Archanas, but you reminded all of us enough of what your own mentor's accomplished that they decided to celebrate you anyways. You broke almost every rule doing what you did once the chain of command deteriorated enough you became in charge, but the High Council didn't even put you in front of a tribunal for it. How can you point to that and use it as an example for why you shouldn't be in charge?"

That finally set Glimmer off. She charged and threw a savage blow that connected perfectly with the front of Lonnie's face. She heard a snap and felt no small satisfaction when Lonnie cried out and stumbled backwards with both hands cupped over her nose.

"I told you already," Glimmer said, voice as hard and sturdy as steel. "Stop. You have no idea what you're talking about."

Lonnie narrowed her eyes one moment, and the next, Glimmer got a split-second glance of her closing the distance between them again with a mighty lunge. The world lurched and she saw stars as pain ripped across her jaw: Lonnie had connected with a haymaker so powerful it had knocked all sense of balance out of her. Unable to keep upright, she fell backward to the ground and put both hands in the grass trying to steady herself.

Lonnie padded over and loomed above her as the world continued to spin. She held one hand at her nose which dripped blood down to her chin, and the other she held still raised in a fist near her chest plate. A wet cracking noise filled the air when she set her nose, and Lonnie winced from it.

"If you have the gall to tell me what happened today is 'just what happens' after I put a bullet between the eyes of almost my entire team," she said, "then you have no right tell me that what you did on that assignment wasn't leadership in a tight spot. Especially not after you managed to actually save people." She spat again and Glimmer saw more blood than spit come out. Lonnie cursed under her breath.

"You might think you're too compromised to lead, but unless some pinhead doctor who knows what they're talking about discharges you for PTSD, what you think means jack shit when compared to what you can do on the battlefield, Glimmer.

"Aratoth took us on when he had no room to do so because he knew the statistics behind Vanguard teams without someone to lead them. I couldn't do it. We would have been dead in days on our own out there without him, and instead, he gets to die because he tried to lead a squad that was too large. He needed you to step up—we all needed you to step up. Now, all they'll get is a furnace and a gravestone. Their blood is on your hands."

Lonnie spat blood on the ground a second time and turned to walk away. The world began to right itself and Glimmer managed to push herself into a fully sitting position. Unfortunately, without the vertigo distracting her, she instead grew more aware of the horrible pain in her jaw and the headache beginning to throb at her temple.

She sat there for a long time with her thoughts, trying to beat away the feeling of dread emanating from Tir in the distance. After a while, she felt brave enough to push to her feet and slowly stumble back to the hospital, alone.